January 9, 2013

The poet is Richard Blanco, the verb "tackles" comes from Politico, and the quote within the quote is in the Presidential Inauguration Committee press release.

I'm not a poet, but I pay attention to images, and I find the picture of tackling an intersection absurd in a particularly amusing way. Intersection of his cultural identities is also absurd but only in that dry, dreary academic way that makes you want to say to all your children and grandchildren: Do not major in the humanities!

What amuses me about tackling an intersection is that it seems to reveal the author's anxiety about the masculinity of the gay poet. Why make us picture a football move? Admittedly, the verb tackle originally meant to equip (a ship) with the necessary furnishing and then to harness (a horse), and only later "To grip, lay hold of, take in hand, deal with; to fasten upon, attack, encounter (a person or animal) physically." So says the OED. But it's all pretty damned macho.

“According to [my grandmother], I was a no-good sissy — un mariconcito — the queer shame of the family,” Blanco wrote. “And she let me know it all the time: Why don’t we just sign you up for ballet lessons? Everyone thinks you’re a girl on the phone — can’t you talk like a man? I’d rather have a granddaughter who’s a whore than a grandson who is a faggot like you.”

Go here for a little more of the writing, including Blanco's description of dressing up like Endora and watching "Bewitched" on TV:

Together we'd turn Mrs. Kravitz into a chihuahua, Derwood into a donkey, or Uncle Arthur into a chair. We were unstoppable....

I was a helpless and scared child, powerless against my grandmother, while Endora was a mighty witch with limitless powers. Unlike Samantha, her foolish daughter, she was a witch who wasn't afraid of being a witch, and used her magic to get her way or enact revenge every time she had a chance.

"Since the beginning of the campaign, I totally related to [Obama's] life story and the way he speaks of his family, and of course his multicultural background,” Mr. Blanco said... “There has always been a spiritual connection in that sense. I feel in some ways that when I’m writing about my family, I’m writing about him."...

Cynics might say that in picking a Latino gay poet, Mr. Obama is covering his political bases....

Aw, come on. People observing the normal things that happen in politics don't deserve to be called "cynics." OED defines "cynic" as:

A person disposed to rail or find fault; now usually: One who shows a disposition to disbelieve in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions, and is wont to express this by sneers and sarcasms; a sneering fault-finder.

Oh, what the hell. I'll accept the label. With politicians, we should be cynics. By the way, "cynic" comes from the Greek for dog-like (which you can sort of see in the word currish, which echoes in churlish).

This Richard Blanco sounds as PC and multiculti as one would expect from a pretentious hack like Obama. It's too predictable and dreary to contemplate.

If we must have a gay poet for the inauguration, I would like to suggest John Ashbery, arguably the most celebrated living American poet. And heck, he even went to Harvard.

Here's my favorite Ashbery poem and entirely appropriate for a second Obama term:

Worsening Situation

Like a rainstorm, he said, the braided colorsWash over me and are no help. Or like oneAt a feast who eats not, for he cannot chooseFrom among the smoking dishes. This severed handStands for life, and wander as it will,East or west, north or south, it is everA stranger who walks beside me. O seasons,Booths, chaleur, dark-hatted charlatansOn the outskirts of some rural fete,The name you drop and never say is mine, mine!Some day I'll claim to you how all used upI am because of you but in the meantime the rideContinues. Everyone is along for the ride,It seems. Besides, what else is there?The annual games? True, there are occasionsFor white uniforms and a special languageKept secret from the others. The limesAre duly sliced. I know all thisBut can't seem to keep it from affecting me,Every day, all day. I've tried recreation,Reading until late at night, train ridesAnd romance.

One day a man called while I was outAnd left this message: "You got the whole thing wrongFrom start to finish. Luckily, there's still timeTo correct the situation, but you must act fast.See me at your earliest convenience. And pleaseTell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it."I thought nothing of it at the time. LatelyI´ve been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingeringStarched white collars, wondering whether there’s a wayTo get them really white again. My wifeThinks I’m in Oslo- Oslo, France, that is.

Checking some of Blanco's poems on the web, he's not as bad as I expected. He is more a poet than an identity poet, happily.

He writes in first-person, semi-confessional plainspeak, jammed with imgaes, typical of current poetry, when it hasn't taken a left turn at Ashbery and become an inscrutable art object.

Burning in the Rain

Someday compassion would demandI set myself free of my desire to recreatemy father, indulge in my mother’s losses,strangle lovers with words, forcing themto confess for me and take the blame.Today was that day: I tossed them, sheetby sheet on the patio and gathered theminto a pyre. I wanted to let them goin a blaze, tiny white dwarfs implodingbeside the azaleas and ficus bushes,let them crackle, burst like winged seeds,let them smolder into gossamer embers—a thousand gray butterflies in the wind.Today was that day, but it rained, keptraining. Instead of fire, water—dropsknocking on doors, wetting windowsinto mirrors reflecting me in the oaks.The garden walls and stones swellinginto ghostlier shades of themselves,the wind chimes giggling in the storm,a coffee cup left overflowing with rain.Instead of burning, my pages turnedinto water lilies floating over puddles,then tiny white cliffs as the sun set,finally drying all night under the mooninto papier-mâché souvenirs. Todaythe rain would not let their lives burn.

He should sell off the post to make a couple of dollars for the Treasury. I am sure someone would pay a lot to be the "Official Soda of the Barack Obama Second Term."Or the offical Window Treatment Company. Or car. Or whatever.

What? He has already sold off most of his soul to his crony capitalist enablers? Nevermind.

Intersectionality is a new buzz word in humanities. It's where one whine crosses another. Basically, it's a way of ordering the importance of grievances under the guise of comparing their impact. Hybrid whingers, like this guy, have a big leg up on everyone else.

He's a real nowhere Man, Sitting in his Nowhere Land, Making all his nowhere plans For nobody.

I'm soooo glad that Blanco has a spiritual connection to Obama. That's soooo important. Barf. Blanco's words support the theory that homosexuality is a mental illness, but he's just a mentally ill person who happens to be gay. Must have been his mean grandmother.

BTW - what's with the racist name, "Blanco?" Spanish for white. Is this subliminal hat tip to white supremists?

According to [my grandmother], I was a no-good sissy — un mariconcito — the queer shame of the family...I was a helpless and scared child, powerless against my grandmother...I totally related to [Obama's] life story and the way he speaks of his family